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MichaelBishop comments on Why safety is not safe - Less Wrong
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Resources don't become scarce overnight. It happens a little more slowly, the price of the scarce resource rises. People find ways to use it more efficiently; they find or invent substitutes.
Nor would unprecedented levels of resource scarcity be likely to lead to a war between major powers. Our political systems may be imperfect, but the logic of mutually assured destruction would be clear and compelling even to the general public.
When was the last time a government polled the general public before plunging the nation into war?
Now that I think about it, the American public, for instance, has already voted for petrowar: with its dollars, by purchasing SUVs and continuing to expand the familiar suburban madness which fuels the cult of the automobile.
I encourage you to write more serious comments... or find some other place to rant.
Please attack my arguments. I truly mean what I say. I can see how you might have read me as a troll, though.
In the next century I think it is unlikely 1. resource scarcity will dramatically lower economic growth across the world, or 2. competition for resources will lead to devastating war between major powers, e.g. U.S. and China, because each country has too much to lose.
I believe my opinions are shared by most economists, political scientists, politicians. Do you agree that you hold a small minority opinion?
Do you have any references where the arguments are spelled out in greater detail?
Yes, of course.
I was persuaded by the writings of one Dmitry Orlov. His work focuses on the impending collapse of the U.S.A. in particular, but I believe that much of what he wrote is applicable to the modern economy at large.
I feel that in this argument, the onus is on you to provide evidence that most people are ignoring a serious risk.
I don't have a good way of assigning probabilities either, but I feel obliged to try.
I estimate the probability that scarcity of natural resources leads to a fifty percent decline in real GDP per capita in many wealthy countries in the next fifty years is less than one percent.
Conditional on my being wrong, I would be very confused about the world, but at this point would still assign less than a five percent risk of large scale nuclear war between major powers which are both aware there is a very high risk of mutual destruction.
I don't think I'm looking at the world through rose colored glasses. I think the risk of small scale nuclear conflict, or threats such as the use of a bioengineered virus by terrorists, is much greater.
I haven't earned a great deal of authority on these topics. I am a phd student in sociology who reads a lot of economics. As far as I can tell, economists don't seem to think we should worry that scarcity of natural resources could lead to such major economic problems. I'd be interested to know what the market "thinks." What investment strategy would profit in such a scenario?